Sex, SOLV and civic pride

Combing Barbur Boulevard’s shoulders for litter this morning as a SOLV volunteer (Quick, what does SOLV stand for?) was a not an unpleasant experience.

Note the inescapable nuancing.

Sure, I find it annoying that motorists still use the Great Outdoors as a trash receptacle. I mean, who are these people?

Well, smokers for one. At times my litter picking was a kind of cigarette butt-a-thon.

A certain litter-collecting detachment is called for at times like this. Trying to think well of these smoking litter-bugs, the best I could come up with was, “Good luck with the chemo.”

The other major littering group are fast food and soft drink patrons. Smashed cans and wrappings from McDonald’s and Subway are their tossed leavings.

Reaching for the scraps with my arm extending litter “grabber,” stuffing the waste into my SOLV bag, I also reached for more detachment, warding off junk-food thoughts of diabetes and clogged arteries,

(Still working on SOLV? Frankly I can’t think of it myself. Something to do with Volunteers, Oregon, Litter and … what?….Super? Solution? Staunchly? Stamp-out? AHHH. Stamp-out Oregon Litter, Volunteers? Oh, never mind….Back to the trash….)

Sometimes the clean-up uncovers trash of distinction, but nothing interesting surfaced this time.

Instead I retrieved:

The inevitable walnut-sized chunks of Styrofoam. Trust me, the last human creation on the planet, eons from now, will be such a moldering chunk.

Shredded plastic bags, a few mossy bottles, creased and discolored candy wrappers, most notably from Reese’s Pieces (ET go home!) and Snickers.

Some worn and discolored sheet metal and strands of banding. Ugly but probably valuable.

Cast-off hub caps, but plastic, cheap and shattered. Ah, for one of those shiny '50s VW disks.

Nothing to seize the imagination.

Once on one of these litter-gathering outings I found a pristine pair of stiletto high-heels along the much littered Multnomah Boulevard I-5 off ramp.

“Whoa!” I thought as I gripped my grabber more tightly and launched into a sex-filled fantasy laced with booze, flirtatious taunts and even noir-ish homocide.

Could such imaginings be the reason I volunteer for SOLV (Still working on it?). Or is it the nose-to-the-ground concentration, the vague reflections on chance and trash. The finicky sordidness of it all as the traffic whooshes past.

It could be simpler than that. After a couple hours’ work with two or three friends, Barbur Boulevard or Capitol Highway or the Multnomah I-5 off-ramp does look measurably better to us and to thousands of motorists.

The reward is civic satisfaction.

Anything beyond that is just so much Styrofoam frosting — or stilettos shoes.

Oh, and looking up what SOLV stands for on the SOLV web site, I find….absolutely NOTHING! They don’t know what it means either! Or, if they know, they aren’t telling, like some kind of secret handshake.

For the rest of us, SOLV is a contrivance or a state of mind (see above).

If you want to pursue the SOLV name business, fine. Let me know what your find out. I’m going to take a well-deserved nap.

Media trifecta: sponsored columns, advertising banter and mega names

Normally I don’t hit a media-watch trifecta, but yesterday The New York Times served up one. One score was on the sports page; two were in the business section (of course).

The crumbling wall

First we have further erosion of the once purported impervious barrier between advertising and editorial content in newspapers. Now the Philadelphia Inquirer, under new management, is selling off “sponsored columns,” assuring its readers that the editorial integrity of said columns will be maintained.

Never mind the appearance of conflict of interest.

What’s to say that every newspaper reliant on advertising (and they all are) hadn’t sold out in its integrity long before this? Well the theory was that if you spread out the revenue source widely, no single part of the paper would suffer the loss of its independence.

Under the new game, advertisers can pick off individual columnists one by one.

I suppose there’s a model for this in broadcasting. If networks can sell whole programs to single sponsors, why can’t newspapers sell columnists to advertisers?

I fear that a newspaper industry spiraling to its demise just steepened its descent.

Shilling for dollars

Then there’s the curious situation in Dallas where our old friends at Clear Channel (they own most of Portland’s billboards and KPOJ) have dropped commercials — sort of — at its radio station, KZPS.

Instead of running real commercials, the announcers will weave plugs into their banter. “Excuse me a second while I take a gulp of my refreshing, delicious Coke” or “I sure do love the smell of my armpits today using this new Gillette roll-on” or “The traffic is bad out there this morning but I hope all you commuters are using Shell. You know I find it runs so much cleaner.”

A rose by any other name would be sponsored

Finally I'm ready to bestow my "how-many-sponsors-can-we-sell-a single-event-name-to?" award.

It goes to “the Subway Fresh Fit 500 Nextel Cup Race.”

That’s the Nascar race they ran in Arizona last Saturday.

The Times dutifully reported the entire bastardized moniker on its sports page, thereby helping lend value to the whole naming rights travesty.

But do race car fans actually call this motorized marathon between very sleek billboards on wheels "The Subway Fresh Fit 500 Nextel Cup Race"?

I don’t think so.

They leave that to the willing, laughable media.

By the way, I think I know the Subway and Nextel parts—but don’t try eating one while talking over the other.

But excuse me for a moment while I google what a “Fresh Fit 500 cup” is. I'm thinking some kind of jock strap or bra....

Well, who would have thought?

The race is 500 miles long and the “Fresh Fit” bit is actually a variety of Subway sandwich touting a lot fewer calories than Big Macs and Whoppers. Of course just about anything west of a New York cheese cake has fewer calories than the two bun burgers.

Oh, the name's unsold "Cup" part is still a container — I hope....